


Everything but the Kitchen Sink

by GhostofBambi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fake Dating, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22535335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostofBambi/pseuds/GhostofBambi
Summary: Consequences ensue when James Potter drunkenly promises to bring his arch-nemesis to his friend's wedding as his date. Oops?
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 173
Kudos: 484





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BeeDaily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeeDaily/gifts).



"So I was your second choice?" she demands, tears glistening in her eyes. "All this time?"

"No," James tells her, because she wasn't.

But _was she?_

*****

"But no matter what happened between you," she gently admonishes, "she's still your mother."

"And?"

"And if you don't try to fix things with her now, you'll end up regretting it when she's gone."

The straw slips from Sirius's mouth as he raises his head and shoulders to sit back, his arms lifting to fold across his chest.

"Go fuck yourself," he tells her.

*****

_29 Nov 2019_

**James:** sirius took the quiz and he's cody  
hahahahaha he's so pissed

 **Izzy:** Do you mean Jughead?

 **James:** yeah that guy

 **Izzy:** Why is he pissed?

 **James:** prefers zack  
zach?  
too lazy to google  
i got archie?? whoever that is?

 **Izzy:** Haha oh no.  
You're far too clever to be Archie.  
And not quite ginger enough.

 **James:** i DO have a certain affinity with the gingers tho

 **Izzy:** Emma Stone <3

 **James:** i mean, she's a fake ginger  
but also AGREED

 **Izzy:** Oh!   
Before I forget!  
Could I get the name of your guest?

_2 Dec 2019_

**Izzy:** Hey honey!  
Do you happen to have the name of your guest?   
I don't mean to bother you if you're busy.  
It's just that we need it fairly soon.

_6 Dec 2019_

**Izzy:** Hey James, I don't know if you're not getting my messages and I'm really really sorry to be a pain, but I really need that name from you when you get a chance?

_19 Dec 2019_

**Izzy:** Hey James.  
I really need the name of your guest when you get a moment, please?

_20 Dec 2019_

_Missed call from izzy m_

_Missed call from izzy m_

_Missed call from izzy m_

_Voicemail from izzy m_

_25 Dec 2019_

**Izzy:** Happy Christmas to you and yours xx

_2 Jan 2020_

**Izzy:** Happy New Year x  
Could you please give me a call when you get a chance?

_5 Jan 2020_

**Izzy:** Hey, I'm sorry if this is a bad time and I really don't want to start an argument.  
I really wouldn't keep asking if it wasn't urgent, but I have been asking you for that name for weeks now and we really need it so we can get everything finalised, and it's really starting to upset me that you won't confirm your guest.  
I know you're very busy at work and you have deadlines, but can you please text me back and let me know asap?  
I just need the name.  
Please?

*****

It's when he realises that he likes that poxy nickname.

That's it.

That's the moment.


	2. green legs and ham

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't get past the fact that I posted the prologue instead of saving it as a draft, which is WHY that got posted, in case anyone was wondering!!
> 
> In any case, the cow's been milked, so I just want to wish a (very advanced) Happy Birthday to my Bee, who is as beautiful and talented as she is loving and generous (with her time, her friendship, you name it). My love, I am so utterly tickled that we are going to be Disney Paris twins and I am CHOMPING AT THE BIT (all in caps) to see you in 65 days and 16 hours. Thank you so very much for your friendship and for the strength and support you offer me from across an ocean. I love you dearly and always.

**January 2020**

There's nothing much happening in West London when Sirius Black takes his best friend's life and eviscerates it with a firework.

Nothing much is happening at all, save for an ill-bred wind that whips at bushes and cherry tree branches, scatters stones across driveways and bends the poles of a dozen unlucky umbrellas, but what happens outside is of little consequence to the occupants of a stately Victorian house with a red front door. Inside, a loved-up couple have been struck down with the flu, a ginger cat sleeps soundly in a claw-legged bathtub, and James Potter is silently trying to discern which particular scent emanates from the essential oil diffuser when Sirius appears on the living room threshold and lets the firework go.

He does so by saying, "The kitchen sink's gone wonky," and James, who isn't aware that the tapestry of his own existence has rapidly begun to unravel, looks up from his drafting table and frowns.

"The what's gone what?" he asks, then sniffs the air.

It might be ylang ylang.

"Sink's gone wonky," Sirius repeats.

Beatrice Booth lifts her head from her boyfriend's shoulder. "What do you mean, wonky?"

Sirius shrugs, stalks across the room and—because he can't sit in a chair without first performing the descent like an actor treading the boards on Broadway—throws himself backwards over the armrest of his favoured recliner, the brown leather squeaking in protest at the rub of his jeans.

"What's wrong with the sink?" says James.

A normal human being would answer the question with haste, but Sirius lies back, kicks up his legs, peels the film from the packet of ham he's holding and pinches the top slice between his forefinger and thumb.

"I love ham," he murmurs, apparently to himself.

James straightens up in his chair and narrows his eyes. _"Sirius."_

"It's wonky, I already said."

"Can you stop saying wonky?" James protests. He drops his pencil on the table and takes off his glasses, both to emphasise his point and because he's already decided that his brain's not in the mood to work today. "It's starting to sound like a fake word."

"Wonky," Beatrice repeats, dabbing her nose with a tissue.

"Wonky," Remus murmurs, his eyes on the telly. He and Beatrice have been snuggled on the sofa together since practically the moment they fell ill, a lovesick melding of pyjamas and limbs, sharing an open weave blanket built for one, propped up by several of the purple satin cushions which have been infiltrating the room bit-by-bit since she moved in back in October. "Nothing _matches_ in this house," she'd announced on her first night, her gaze roving from the battered old recliner to the stiff grey loveseat to the pink glitter lava lamp that Sirius purchased "for irony" during a drunken Amazon spree.

The house is a mismatched hodgepodge still, except now it's got a dozen identical cushions and a teardrop-shaped diffuser which might be pumping tea tree oil into the atmosphere, not to mention two flu-ridden lovebirds. Luckily, James is perfectly safe from their marauding germs—his mother forced him to get a flu shot back in autumn—while Sirius claims to be safe because he "had it as a child," as if Influenza A is merely Chickenpox with snot.

Beatrice nudges Remus with her elbow and he pauses the telly.

"The sink, Sirius?" he says, in his no-nonsense tone. Even with a stuffy nose and a croaky voice, Remus emanates the authority of a capable teacher, which makes perfect sense, as he is one.

Sirius flips one end of the slice into his mouth. "What?"

"What's gone wrong with the sink?"

"It's broken or something," says Sirius thickly. "I dunno."

Remus scoffs at Sirius's vagueness and opens his mouth to prod further, but is beaten to the punch by James, who has wiped his glasses clean and, in putting them back on, noticed something even more offensive than a wonky sink.

"Is that _my_ ham?" he demands.

The thin, pink slice of processed pig is draped across Sirius's pale chin as he gnaws on it, pulling it further and further into his mouth in jerking intervals. "It's the house's ham."

"I bought that ham!"

"For the house."

"For _myself."_

"Sorry to be the one who wants to discuss the actual problem, I know it's terribly inconvenient for you both," Remus cuts in, "but what's going on with the sink?"

Sirius grins widely at James, pushing a chunk of masticated meat in front of his teeth with his tongue. "Leaking."

"You're a dick," says James in disgust.

"I'll check, babe, you relax," says Beatrice quietly, and pushes the blanket away as Remus moves to stand up from the sofa, unfurling her absurdly long legs from where they have been draped across his lap and stuffing her tissue down the front of her shirt.

"What's a little bit of ham between friends?" says Sirius innocently.

"You're always eating my bloody food!"

"Since when?"

"You had the last of my Maltesers last week," James recounts, checking the items off on his fingers, "you ate the leftover pasta, you've been filching my breakfast bars—"

"Boys, please," sighs Beatrice, who has risen to her feet.

"—my miso soup, that avocado I bought, my monkfish medallions—"

"Those fucking monkfish medallions again!" Sirius snaps. Admittedly, the monkfish fiasco happened back in July. "Learn to let something _go_ for once in your fucking life!"

"I don't package up my leftovers so you can steal them," James grumbles.

"Well fuck, I'm sorry for appreciating your cooking."

"If you bought your own food, I'd cook it for you."

"You don't have to cook for him, honey," says Beatrice.

"Private conversation, Yoko," Sirius retorts, and throws a nasty look at Beatrice, who is heading into the kitchen, her feet encased in comically oversized woollen socks. He picks up another slice of ham and dangles it over his face. "Make us a coffee, would you? I'm parched."

"I'm sick. Fuck off and get your own coffee," Beatrice calls over her shoulder.

She vanishes into the kitchen without another word, so Sirius glowers at Remus instead.

"I'm _so_ glad that she lives here now," he tells him sweetly, though there's no mistaking the sarcasm.

Remus smiles back. "So am I, thanks."

"You know I don't mean it."

"Don't care if you do."

"I told you both that the day we brought a woman into this house would be the beginning of the end."

"It's James's house," Remus points out.

"Yeah, a _house,_ not an old-timey pirate ship," James seconds. "We're not going to sink if we bring a woman on board."

"Any excuse to bring it all back to fucking _pirates—"_

"Shut up, Sirius. I'm glad that she moved in."

"Yeah, because she babies you."

"Oh, and she doesn't baby you?"

"That woman—"

"You're the one getting your manicures done by that _woman."_

"I might object to her presence," Sirius reasons, examining his fingernails, "but that doesn't mean I'm stupid."

"James will be next, Sirius, and when he moves in with a girlfriend they'll want to live by themselves. Enjoy the perks of his bachelorhood while you still can and stop stealing his bloody food," Remus instructs. "Now shut up, both of you, I want to hear the next question."

He raises the remote control and _Richard Osman's House of Games_ is resumed. Remus records each episode during the week and watches all five every Saturday morning. The entire household enjoys playing along and even used to keep score, until it surfaced that both Sirius and Beatrice were cheating with reckless disregard for fair play.

Remus didn't mind, though. He and Bea are so sickeningly in love that he'd likely forgive her if she murdered the postman and hid the body in the freezer, and James considers them both his family, but witnessing their demonstrations of decidedly non-familial affection each day—when he has been single for practically the last twelve decades—is a downside he didn't foresee when he agreed that Bea could move in.

But that's no reason to let an ill friend check on a wonky sink unassisted, so he springs up from his armchair, snatches the packet of ham from his best mate's hands—"Oi!" Sirius cries, but makes no effort to recover it—and follows Beatrice into the kitchen.

"Make us a coffee, would you babe?" Sirius shouts.

James kicks the door shut behind him.

*****

He needs to remind Beatrice to remind _him_ to text Izzy back, because he truly hates himself for putting it off for so long.

But…if he does, James will find himself held accountable.

If he does, he'll have to _actually_ text her back.

And James doesn't want to text Izzy. He's comfortable just reminding himself to remind Bea to remind him. It's less than the bare minimum, an infinitesimal scrap of so-called "effort," but James can pretend it's _something_ that he thinks of it at all, a reminder that he really does cares about Isabella Marks—that he cares enough to feel like an inconsiderate piece of shit for neglecting to text her—before his own self-abasement compels him to put it out of his mind once more.

He really needs to remind Beatrice to remind him to text Izzy back.

He'll do it tomorrow for certain.

(he already knows that's a lie)

*****

"Lazy prick couldn't even wipe it up," Bea's muttering. "I need a bit more."

"I can do it for you."

"I can handle basic tasks, James, I'm not dying."

"I'm just _saying—"_

"You're just _saying_ nothing, this is soaked," she interrupts, brandishing a sopping wet piece of paper towel. "Could you stop treating me like I've got the plague for five seconds and just hand me some more, please?"

Beatrice is one of those good-humoured, chipper people who don't snap at their mates unless they're having a putrid stinker of a day, so James unrolls several more squares and hands them over with a one-word apology and no further argument. His housemate is squatting on the floor, mopping up a large puddle of water that certainly wasn't there two hours ago, when James slouched into his kitchen in his t-shirt and boxers, flipped the heating on and made himself a mug of instant coffee.

Her light brown hair is so long that she's had to wrap it across her throat like a scarf to keep it from trailing on the limestone tiles.

"I don't get how it leaked if the sink wasn't running," she remarks.

"Did you or Remus use it earlier?"

"I basically had to death crawl Remus from our bed to the sofa this morning and the kettle was already full when I used it," says Bea. "Speaking of, could you make me a coffee?"

"Sure."

"With caramel syrup?"

"Do we even have any?"

"Got some in Waitrose last week. You can have some if you don't make one for Sirius."

"Oh, Sirius can fuck right off," says James, placing the paper towel roll back on its holder.

He slips his phone out of his pocket on the way to the kettle and glances at the unopened message on the lock screen. Checking his phone regularly is handy when he wants to remind himself that he's an unreliable dick who doesn't reply to his friends' important questions, and that he _really_ needs to ask Bea or Remus to force him to text Izzy back.

Beatrice, meanwhile, opens the utility cupboard beneath the sink and peers inside. "Water in the cupboard too."

"You don't think someone left a giant ice cube in there, do you?"

"Oh sure, that's like, the primary cause of leaks."

James shrugs. "Best example I can think of."

"Didn't you used to work for a plumber?"

"Who told you that?"

"Remus."

"Oh," says James flatly, and switches the kettle on. He drops his phone back into his pocket and leans against the counter. "I didn't _work_ for a plumber, I had a school placement when I was about sixteen. I never actually _did_ anything." From what James can recall of his youthful foray into the world of manual labour, his work placement had mostly comprised of sitting in a pub at lunchtime and drinking tepid mugs of tea in old ladies' kitchens. "Don't expect me to know how to fix that."

"It's fine, I've got a friend who can do it on the cheap. Mates' rates," says Beatrice. "I'll text her and see if she's free later."

She jumps to her feet with her usual sprightliness, her glossy hair falling to rest below her hips, but the act of getting up alone seems to drain her of all remaining energy, so she lowers herself onto a stool and flings her wet paper towels at the bin, hitting the spring release lid, which snaps open and sends the misshapen lump flying right into the wall.

"Shit, I guess," she mutters, watching the wad of wet paper slide its way to the tiled floor, as if she has never cared less about a single thing in her life.

"I wish I'd filmed that," James laments.

"I _should_ be getting filmed all the time."

"Would be a bit weird if I was the one filming you."

"Remus would understand, I'm too fascinating to be kept from the general public," she says, though she has let her body sag against the breakfast bar and her reply is a little muffled by her arm. She fishes her phone out from the pocket of her dressing gown and holds it very close to her face. "I think I'm dead."

"So go to bed."

"No, texting friend."

"Your plumber friend?"

"Mmm."

"Where'd you meet her?"

"Aaron's ex. She got me in the breakup."

"That doesn't seem very fair to your brother."

"And stalking isn't very fair on girlfriends."

James's eyebrows leap towards his hairline. "Your brother _stalked_ his girlfriend?"

"Among other things," Beatrice cryptically replies, stifling a yawn. "He got what he deserved and so did I."

"That story sounds dramatic and I definitely want to hear it, but not when you're in danger of falling off that stool. If you won't go to bed, go back inside," James instructs, in his best impression of his father. It's not an ideal choice—his dad's about as firm as melting butter—but Bea is _just_ sick enough that the titanium-plated will of his mother isn't required, and James can't pull that off anyway. "I'll bring your coffee in when it's ready."

"Fine, Dad," she concedes, sliding off the stool. "Could you put caramel syrup in mine?"

"You already asked me that."

She groans and squeezes her eyes shut. "I'm definitely fucking dying."

"Two minutes ago you were capable of basic tasks," says James slyly. "Like remembering things you'd asked me, et cetera et cetera."

"Well, now I'm not, piss off," Beatrice grumbles. She begins her shuffle across the kitchen, which is so cavernous that James could comfortably set up a restaurant in his front room. "My friend says she can drop by later, by the way."

"Cool."

"Just in case I pass out or die before then, because I'm _definitely_ going to die, make sure Sirius keeps his dick away from this one, yeah? It's really awkward when he sleeps with my friends and ghosts them afterwards."

James snorts. "You didn't mind him sleeping with Sandie."

"Sandie was passive-aggressive and talked behind my back," says Bea crossly, "I was _trying_ to phase her out."

She crosses the remaining distance to the living room door, yanks it open like it's personally offended her, lets out a baleful little whimper and vanishes, just as the kettle finishes whistling and announces that it has boiled with a neat _click._

Too late, James remembers that he'd meant to ask Beatrice to tell him which essential oil she'd put in the diffuser which, of course, is the sole important thing he needs to ask her.

Just that one thing.

*****

James doesn't want her back.

Sirius might claim otherwise—he doesn't understand his friend's resolve to keep things civil, to be the bigger person and _not_ act out in anger—but Sirius is wrong. James will never want her back. They're not right for each other; this he knows for certain, eight years, three breakups, and one long period of intense introspection later.

He really doesn't care that she's engaged.

Good for her.

It's just…it would be nice if she wasn't getting married to the person she _left_ him for.

*****

A pair of legs are sticking out from under the kitchen sink.

They're long legs, shapely legs, encased in a pair of worn skinny jeans which have been liberally splashed with green paint, and perhaps James isn't quite with it today, or perhaps he's been so hard up for sex for such a long time that he's become some sort of desperate, secret pervert, but he finds himself staring at those legs for a good fifteen seconds before he snaps back to reality and sets his bag of shopping down on the counter.

Like the biggest dork in the world, James is wearing a John Cena t-shirt and has fairly bad breath from the bloody onion bagel he scoffed on his way home from Waitrose, not to mention the wad of wet kitchen towel that nobody bothered to clear from the floor. His many tins of Felix clang together as they land on the counter, and he feels an overwhelming rush of shame at having bulk bought cat food like a crazy cat man when there's a woman with sexy legs in his unclean kitchen. 

Then again, he reasons, it is _his_ kitchen. James owns this massive, beautiful house outright, and he's not yet twenty-four. That must be impressive enough to counteract bad breath and worse t-shirts and numerous tins of cat food.

But then _again,_ he didn't earn the money that bought the house.

And then again _again,_ the last thing he wants is to court the attention of a woman who finds that kind of superficial stuff impressive anyway. The only reason Beatrice and Remus met in the first place is because a mutual friend had told her James was rich and she—a self-proclaimed, unashamed fortune hunter—went after _him_ in a pop-up bar in Camden, on trivia night, only to abandon that plan as soon as she approached their table and locked eyes with Remus. He was so distracted by her presence that the Marauders broke a seven week win record, and she ended the night a completely changed woman, for whom all the riches in the world cannot compare to Remus Lupin.

James—a self-proclaimed, deeply ashamed sap—badly wants that kind of pure, genuine, non-transactional romance in his life.

It's weird that he's pondering this idea because of a pair of legs.

"Hello?" he says, forcing himself to look at her hot pink Converse, which are unlikely to send him on strange trains of thought. There's a loud creaking sound, rather like the door of an old, haunted house swinging open, followed by a metallic clunk and a brief silence.

"Hello," the owner of the legs replies.

"Are you Bea's plumbing friend?"

"Yup," says the legs. "Just tinkering about down here, don't mind me."

Though her chest and head are fully contained within the cupboard, her voice is clear and pretty, and distantly familiar to James, who supposes she must be someone he's met at some social event in the time since Beatrice and Remus started dating. Beatrice has a lot of friends and most of them are women, though James can't remember a time that he met one he particularly fancied.

Not that he'd recognise any of them now, because all he can see is a pair of legs.

Magnificent legs.

Rather than staying where he is and gawking at the legs like a lech, James goes to the fridge and opens it, his eyes scanning the shelves for a sufficient distraction. "Where's Beatrice?"

"Upstairs. I told her to go take a nap."

He lets out a huff of annoyance. "She wouldn't take a nap when _I_ suggested it."

"Well, Remus is up there now, so..."

"So she had reason and motive?"

"Normally I'd assume they were up there going at it—which I once caught them doing in my bedroom, mind—but I don't think either of them are fit for anything more than a light snuggle in the state they're in."

"That's...a lot to unpack."

"Isn't it _just?"_

"What defines a 'light' snuggle, exactly?"

"One that doesn't lead to sex in the middle of the day," says the legs, with a nonchalance most people reserve for informal chats about the weather. This girl doesn't seem too fussed about social conventions, nor does she seem remotely shy. "Which of her housemates am I talking to, anyway?"

Retreating from the fridge with a carton of orange juice, James pauses with his hand on the door. "The better looking one?"

"See, Bea would say that was Remus."

"Yeah, _she'd_ say," he grumbles, and the woman attached to the legs laughs appreciatively. "I'm James."

"Oooooooh."

"Oooooooh, what?"

"Oooh, that makes you the sweet one," the legs reply. "It also makes you the one who listens to Taylor Swift in the bath when he's had a rough day, but honestly I find that endearing."

"Beatrice doesn't," says James, and mimes thumping the wall with his fist, silently vowing revenge. "She hammers on the door and shouts at me to turn it down."

"Bea thinks that _Red_ is an overrated album, don't pay attention to what she thinks about anything," says the legs, and James briefly considers proposing marriage, but that would be jumping the gun by several miles, and given what he knows about her doomed relationship with Beatrice's stalker brother, it's possible that he'll wind up with a pipe wrench embedded in the back of his skull if he dares entertain the thought.

More importantly, Beatrice has warned him expressly to keep dicks away from this girl.

Scratch that, Sirius's dick.

Not James's dick.

Bea specifically told him to keep _Sirius_ away, but she said nothing about other interested parties, which can only mean that James's dick is fine. That James is fine. He's "the sweet one." _Sweet._ Beatrice wouldn't have lauded him to her friend as "the sweet one" unless she felt perfectly at ease with the idea of them meeting and having a lot of sex and potentially getting married. _Surely._

He must have arrived at a particularly sad juncture in his life, he muses, if he can have these thoughts about a woman without seeing her face. James hasn't gone on a date or had anything resembling a girlfriend in over a year, but he's been under the impression that he was fine, that it would take more than _half_ a woman's body to get him all worked up.

Still, he should mention that he knows what a pipe wrench is. That might impress her.

He shuts the fridge door and slouches against it. "What else has she said about me?"

"Oh," the legs sigh. There's a series of squeaks and clunks, followed by some heavy shuffling, and more of her torso disappears into the cupboard. "You know."

"I really don't know, that's why I'm asking."

"She said you probably broke the sink, if that helps?"

"What?" He springs away from the fridge, sparing the floor from an orange juice spillage only because he'd neglected to twist the lid off the carton. "I did _not!"_

"Oh, _I_ know you didn't."

"Because Beatrice is a dirty liar and you're more than familiar with her tricks?"

"No." Her laughter echoes in her small chamber. "Because it's not your sink that's broken, it's your boiler."

"Our—" James collapses against the fridge and stares at the boiler, which is mounted on the wall by the window, about a half-foot away from the sink. "So how did the cupboard—"

"Their pipes share the cupboard, and one of your boiler's pipes is pretty badly eroded. It's a fairly common occurrence with a boiler this age, plus, you've not had a service in a couple of years—remind me to tell you off for that later," explains the legs, while James blinks at the glowing red light on the innocent-looking appliance and thinks, _but I know what a pipe wrench is, please like me,_ as if knowing what a pipe wrench is could possibly impress this far more knowledgeable woman. Or her excellent, paint-splashed legs. "Did anyone have a shower this morning?"

"I...turned on the heating?" he remembers aloud.

"Well, see? That's what did it."

"So it _is_ my fault?"

"You _could_ look at it that way, sure," she suggests. Her voice is tight, strained. She's working hard to move something in or out of place. "Or you could look at it like this; that you're the hero who alerted everyone else to the problem, thereby getting it fixed before it could do any real damage, which is a much healthier decision, I think."

His orange juice carton swings by his side, forgotten. "It _was_ quite heroic, when you think about it."

"I hear the bards are penning songs of it as we speak."

"I hear they're staging a tourney in my name."

"Twelve bushels of corn and a buxom wench to the winner," she says, giggling.

"And Beatrice isn't invited," James concludes. "She doesn't appreciate culture."

"Listen, mate," the legs drawl, clanking away. "I'm just—oh, hang on." _Clank clank clank._ "I'm just here to help you exercise your human right to keep on having Taylor Swift baths in peace, alright? I can't speak to _her_ terrible taste."

"Emotional _support_ Taylor Swift baths," James corrects her, the synapses in his brain firing off in all directions, zing zing zing, because she's got excellent legs and cute pink trainers and they're bantering away quite nicely. "Which I _need,_ by the way, living with that lunatic."

"Try finding her 'in flagrante' with Remus on your bean bag chair."

"On your _bean bag chair?"_

"Yeah, so my housemate was having this party and I guess Bea decided to bring Remus up to—"

"I'm sorry," James interrupts, because he's reaching the nervy stage of excitement—practically a bunny-hop away from a twitchy leg or a stupid, blurted-out statement—and what started as a simple curiosity is growing rapidly into a hard-pressed _need_ to find out who this girl is. "Your voice is really, _really_ familiar, and it's been driving me nuts wondering if I know who you are."

The silence that follows this statement feels longer than it probably is, and for a moment, James is convinced that he's blown it all to bits in his excitement, that by cutting over her he's acted like one of those men who never lets the woman finish—in _any_ sense of the word—and that she will later emerge from her cupboard to tell Beatrice that her supposedly sweet housemate is a secret misogynist with onion bagel breath and horrendous taste in t-shirts.

"You know," she says, "I was actually just thinking that."

His stupid little heart takes a leap. "Really?

"Really."

"D'you think we've met each other already?"

"I dunno," she muses aloud. "Hang on a sec, I'll pop out and say hello."

She drops her wrench, propels herself out of the cupboard—half crab-crawl, half shuffle—straightens up and dusts off a long, loose-fitting, faded grey t-shirt, and James isn't sure what reaches down his throat and twists first, if it's the thick red hair she's pulled into two Dutch braids on either side of her head, if it's the immediate sense of total self-assurance in the way she holds herself, or if it's that _precise_ shade of emerald green in her eyes, a striking, startling colour that James had never seen before the day he first met her, and never has seen again since.

Until today.

_Now._

In his own bloody kitchen.

"Oh my god," he murmurs, horrified.

"Oh my god," Lily Evans repeats, and her bright green eyes grow wider as recognition dawns upon her face. _"Flopsy?"_

James's half-digested bagel morphs into a monstrous, nauseating whirlpool in his stomach.

Onion and all.


	3. white van man

**July 2012**

She's pretty.

The morning has been washed of most of its colour by a swirling summer fog that sprang up as if by accident, while strands of pale sunshine try their best to make themselves known in all the gloom, filtering through the fading yellow petals of the laburnum tree in the neighbouring garden. They're shades of butter cutting through a dismal shroud of mist. Everything is grey or it is golden.

The street is a street like many others James might see on his way to more affluent places; the identical red-brick houses, all uniform and standing in a row, matching garden walls that are low enough to leap without much effort, cars parked on the road for want of room in their small, square driveways. The garden he stands in has had some of its wall knocked down to accommodate a dirty white van, and chunks of shattered red brick are stacked in a pile on the grass. It wasn't a job neatly done.

It's her garden. She lives in number 9.

She's pretty.

She steps through her front door and pads over to him, barefoot and unconcerned about the gravel that litters her path. She's wrapped in a white cotton bathrobe, long red hair falling about her face in a state of just-woken disarray, green-eyed and frowning and approaching him as he waits for—he can only assume—her father.

And she's pretty. _So_ pretty.

He almost tells her. Almost, in a moment of mind-numbing, panic-stricken, "girl! girl! girl!" stupidity, almost tells her.

But then she opens her mouth.

*****

"Are you here for my dad?" is her first question.

James is sixteen years old, perpetually horny as result, and certain that this girl and her bathrobe are going to play a prominent role in whatever inappropriate dream he's bound to have tonight, so what he wants to say is, "No, I came here for you, and if you'll hop on the back of my bike here I'll show you the time of your life."

But that seems slimy even in his imagination—where he is _always_ unruffled and suave—and this redhead is a gorgeous girl in the flesh, not merely a photograph of one, so his response is, "What's a dad?"

It's a stupid response.

He is _always_ unruffled and suave, until he has to prove it.

The girl lifts her hand and drags a finger along the side of the van, drawing a line through a thick layer of grime which has settled there. The words _Andrew Evans Plumbing Solutions_ are printed above the line in black font.

"That's my dad," she replies, examining the dark grey stain on the tip of her finger. "Do let me know if you can't read."

"I can read," James quickly counters, embarrassed. "Not that you need to know _how_ for a job like this, but—"

"You chose this job, didn't you?" she interrupts, still looking at her finger.

"No, they made me take it."

"Why?"

"Because none of the placements I wanted were a thing."

The girl drops her hand and looks up at him. Of the few brave rays of sunlight that hit the tree next door, one has caught her in its grasp and drapes her in a pale, unearthly glow. "What placements did you ask for?"

"Oh, you know." He lifts a hand and rakes it through his own, equally unkempt black hair, trying to look cool. "MI5 intern, trainee Interpol agent, something like that."

"Are you serious?"

"If you don't ask, you don't get."

"So you really believed that your school would organise a summer work placement for a James Bond wannabe, provided you thought to ask first?"

"I mean, it _is_ my name, so—"

"Your name is James Bond?"

"It's—well, no, my first name _is_ James, but—"

"But it isn't James Bond," she concludes, folding her arms across her chest, "which makes you a liar as well as an idiot."

The disdain in her voice feels like someone unexpectedly spitting in his face—sudden and shocking, and insulting in itself.

"I'm sorry," he says, blinking, "have I offended you in some way I don't know about?"

"Deeply, thanks for asking."

"Wha— _how?"_

"You turned up."

"I turned up," he flatly repeats. "You're pissed off with me because I turned up?"

The girl shrugs, as if this is a reasonable thing to take offence to, his being there at all. "You turned up."

"To this work placement?"

"Yep."

"This work placement that I was given?" he reiterates. "The one that I _have_ to turn up to?"

"I don't know what part of this you need clarifying, Bond."

"It's Potter, actually."

"Potter?" She presses a mocking laugh between her lips. "As in Beatrix?"

"No, Potter as in _me."_

"So you think you're more important than the woman who wrote Peter Rabbit?"

"I didn't say—" James wonders if he wound up in an accident as he was cycling to her house, and this in fact is a weird hallucination he's experiencing as the ambulance rushes him to hospital. _"What?"_

"Either way," she continues, "really impressive spy name, James Potter. You sound like somebody's grandfather, I'm quivering in my little cotton socks."

"You're not even wearing socks!"

"Stop looking at my feet, it's creepy."

She's subjecting him to continued mental whiplash with bullet-like speed, but James is not dim-witted, even if he is stunned, confused, and fitfully, inconveniently aroused by it all. There's an inexplicable eroticism in being casually torn to shreds by a girl who is beautiful and vengeful and has expertly mastered the art of a hard, unblinking stare, but never mind his white-hot hormones, his integrity has been called into question, and he really doesn't want her to notice the boner.

"I wasn't looking at your feet," he retorts, shifting his brown messenger bag in front of his groin, "I noticed them, the way you'd notice _anyone_ walking around outside barefoot at half-past six in the bloody morning."

"Because you were looking."

"Peripheral vision is a thing, yeah?"

"Ooh, Flopsy knows a big word."

_"Flop—"_

But she quickly whips around, prompted by the sound of the front door opening, as a tall, ruddy-faced man with a buzz-cut and tattooed arms steps outside and lifts his large hand in a wave.

"Alright, lad?" he calls out, striding towards them both with his arm extended. He's roughly the size of a tank, heavily-freckled, and not at all who James would have pictured as the father of the pale, graceful, green-eyed slip of a she-devil who stands between them. "You must be the new charge!"

"Must be," he says weakly.

"It's James, isn't it?" The man comes to a stop, takes James's outstretched hand and practically wrenches his arm off with an enthusiastic handshake. "I'm Andy. This is Lily, my little girl, but you must know that by now." He breaks his vice grip on James and surveys his daughter with a critical eye. "What're you doing out here, Princess?"

Of course, of course, of _course_ he calls her Princess.

Girls like her are always Princess; spoiled, pampered, throwing their weight around and crushing everyone else beneath their satin-slippered feet, or bare feet, as the case may be.

"Scoping out the new charge," says the girl.

No.

 _Lily_.

"And?"

She turns back around and throws James a look of deep dislike. "He'll do."

"Doesn't give a thing away, this one," Andy chuckles, then his eyes narrow on them both in feigned suspicion. "I'm not gonna have to get the shotgun out, am I?"

"No!" says James emphatically, silently willing his still-present erection to calm down.

"Definitely not," Lily seconds, sounding bored.

"Well, that's alright, then. You're safe with me," the man proclaims, and claps James on the back before ruffling his daughter's hair and barrelling through them both to round the van, altogether too cheerful for this time of the morning. "Throw your bike in the back of the van and hop in. I'll talk you through everything when we get going."

He unlocks the doors of the van to climb inside, and James, dumbfounded by all that has transpired, stares blankly at Lily, searching for some sort of purchase in this weird situation.

"Er...bye, then?" he offers.

"Whatever, Flopsy," she says, and turns her back on him, "don't get that boner caught in the door."

*****

She comes outside again the next morning.

It's alarming for James, who is mortified by yesterday's events and wasn't expecting to see her today. He tends to steer clear of the people he dislikes, and she's made no secret of her disdain. Logic dictates that she would stay in the house to avoid him.

Clearly, Princess lives by her own set of rules.

"Dad said you didn't seem interested in working yesterday," is her greeting. "I told him I wasn't surprised."

James takes her in as he settles his bike against the wall. She's clutching a glass mug of tea in both hands and looks much the same as yesterday, except that her long hair has been neatly brushed. Her unkempt is fashioned by pillows and sleep, while _his_ unkempt is a constant state of affairs.

Sadly, the look of disapproval on her face has not changed.

If she weren't so cruel, James would probably fancy her.

He almost does, a little.

A _bit._

"I told you that I didn't pick this placement," he reminds her. That's a reasonable argument, no matter what she says. "It was picked _for_ me, and that isn't my fault."

"Yes it is. You wouldn't pick a real one."

"Real people work for MI5, actually."

"Real adults, not...whatever you are," she says coldly. "And anyway, you said you think my dad is thick."

His face heats quickly at the unjustness of this accusation. Lily's dad might be a boilerplate example of the lad culture James's parents have raised him to defy, but he's still a smart man, and his daughter is a liar if she's told him James thinks otherwise. "I did not!"

"You said you don't need to know how to read to do his job."

"And?"

She shrugs one shoulder. "Same difference."

"But that was a joke!"

"Plenty of intelligent people can't read, by the way, not everyone has the advantages—"

"I never said—I was _joking!"_ His heart has started racing and his insides feel all fluttery; he's gone from nought to ninety in about ten seconds, yet she's as cool as a cucumber. "It's not like—I didn't actually _mean_ it!"

"Why say it if you didn't mean it?"

"Because everyone says things they don't mean?"

She lifts her mug to face-level, balancing her elbow on top of her hand. "Do they?"

"They—sometimes, yeah."

Her stance and expression do not change.

"When it's a joke," James tacks on lamely, his heart still skittering with the speed of a snare drum. He's afraid to deflate and breathe; he feels like he's walking into a trap. "It was just a joke, honestly. I think your dad is dead clever."

She cocks her head to one side. "Dead clever?"

"Um—"

"He's clever enough," she agrees, and the mug swings down, though she doesn't spill a single drop of her tea. "but he likes you, even though he knows you don't care about the job, so maybe _dead_ clever is giving him too much credit, yeah?"

The trap clamps hard around his ankle, and a surge of anger flares up in his chest.

He doesn't deserve this. 

What could he have possibly done to deserve this? He met her for the first time _yesterday._

"What the hell is your problem?" he shoots at her.

Princess has the audacity to take a sip of her tea before she answers. "You are."

"But I don't—"

"I already told you yesterday," she cuts in, "you turned up."

"But that doesn't even make sense!" James yelps.

"I don't really care if it does."

His hands ball into fists. "Why are you such a _bloody—"_

But he stops himself, his mouth slamming shut.

There are certain insults that his mother taught him never to lob at a woman, and Lily Evans is not going to be the one to break his resolve.

Now matter how much he wants to yell at her.

"Such a what?" she asks, brows lifted. "A bitch?"

James pretends to ignore her.

"Worse than bitch?" He doesn't answer, so she steps towards him. "What, you're not talking now?"

She's smiling in amusement at this exchange and James is filled with hatred, but the more self-satisfied she looks, the more she appeals to him in an ugly, primal way that makes him want to throw her against the van and snog her. 

He forces his fingers to unclench.

"Got nothing to say," he responds tightly.

"Are you sure? I'm not being very nice."

James shrugs.

"I wouldn't blame you if you _did_ want to call me a bitch."

"Yes you would."

"Yes, I would," she agrees, "but I bet you'd feel good if you said it."

Forget petty insults, there's a whole tirade on the tip of his tongue, and James wants nothing more than to release it when he looks up and sees her smiling still, but he presses his lips together instead.

Maybe this is what it feels like to be the bigger person.

That notion gives him no comfort.

"It _is_ fun to watch you wrestle with these moral dilemmas," Lily sighs, saluting him with her tea, "but mum's making pancakes and they're a lot more appealing than you, so...."

"Good," says James, completely defeated, bereft of anything snappier.

"See you, Flopsy," says Lily, and turns away. "Have fun fixing sinks with my dumb dad."

At that moment, James arrives at three conclusions.

The first, that he will not let himself be so easily bamboozled again.

The second, that Lily Evans is a soul-devouring succubus who uses her pretty eyes, heart-shaped arse and luscious mermaid hair to fool boys into finding her attractive and believing that she's human, or wanting to lick her neck, which is a fixation he can't really explain but finds himself succumbing to anyway.

The third, that he may not care one bit about this job, but he is damn well going to pretend he cares until the summer comes to a close and he's let off the hook for good.

Spite's as good a motivator as any.

*****

Andy Evans is a decent boss, but James hates working for him anyway.

He hates that Andy calls him "Jay," as if he's been inducted into a lads club that he never wanted to join. He hates going for a pint at lunch, sitting in a dank pub with crisps and Coke and whatever sandwich his mum packed him—while Andy plays darts with his mate, Thick Tony, and occasionally buys James a beer—before climbing back into the van and wondering if the Carlsberg his boss downed in the hour will be enough to get them both killed on the road. He hates being the one who has to carry the toolbox, hates standing around watching while Andy fiddles around with pipes and drains and boilers, hates making idle chit-chat with bored, middle-aged housewives, who seem to think he's fair game to be leered at just because he's fit and tall.

But there's nothing he hates more than he hates Lily.

*****

"There was a last minute cancellation last night, so Dad's got no appointments until ten," she informs him, haughty as ever. "He's having a lie-in and wants you to wash the van."

It's very early on a sunny Wednesday, just over two weeks into this ordeal, Lily has come out every single morning to make some sort of barbarous comment, and she's wearing a tank top with no bra.

James forces himself to look at the ground when she bends to drop the bucket she's holding; it lands with a thump and a slop of soapy water splashes out onto the gravelly drive, pooling around her bare feet.

Her toenails have been painted in a shimmery azure blue.

She's pretty—right down to her bloody _toes,_ she's pretty—and James fancies her _so_ much, and it's unbelievably awful.

At least he's gotten better at responding.

"You know what you should have done with that?" he tells her.

"What?"

"Dunked it over your own head."

Her emerald eyes narrow on his face as she straightens up. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"I didn't mean it like—"

"Perve a little bit harder, Flopsy," she sighs, and stretches up, arms reaching skywards, her tank top lifting to reveal a smooth expanse of pale skin beneath. "I think there's a Sherpa somewhere in Nepal who couldn't quite smell your desperation."

He blinks at her stomach and doesn't understand. Is she _trying_ to make him look?

"I'd have to be desperate to perve over you," he snidely replies.

James delivers this retort, despite having recently committed unspeakable acts of self-gratification over a photograph of her that he managed to dig up on Facebook—three times on Sunday alone—with a perfectly straight face.

"Couldn't care less," says Lily, stifling a yawn. She lets her arms fall to her sides. "Do you know how to clean things? Like, the basic principle?"

"Of course I know how to clean things."

"You put the sponge in the water—"

"I said I know how!"

"God, what crawled up your arse and died?" she asks, and surprises him by tossing her father's keys in his direction. He catches them one-handed against his chest. "Sponges are in the back of the van, D'you want a coffee or something?"

"What d'you mean, a coffee?"

"You get a teaspoon and a mug—"

"I know what coffee is," James interrupts, growing even more irritated, "but why are you offering?"

Lily heaves out an impatient sigh, her arms lifting and falling with half-hearted effort. "Because Dad said you liked it? I'm making tea for myself, I dunno, why not offer?"

"Because you're trying to poison me?"

"This isn't the fucking village of Midsomer, I was just trying to be nice."

"You've never been nice in your life."

"And you've never been worth being nice to," she snaps back. "Die of thirst, for all I care, see if _I_ give a shit about it."

She spins on her toes and storms off to the house, her long, sleek ponytail swinging behind her.

"Good bloody riddance!" James calls out, while his eyes fixate on her arse without his permission.

He wishes that she would come back.

*****

Later that morning, when a stomach bug-struck Andy emerges in his boxers and rugby shirt, dressing gown open and flapping in the breeze, marvelling aloud that James was kind enough to stay and wash the van despite being "told to go home three hours ago," when Lily propels herself off the garden wall and stalks back inside, smirking, James wishes he hadn't drank the coffee that she wound up bringing out to him.

He could have waited until it cooled down instead, and thrown it right in her face.

*****

He wouldn't have thrown it in her face. Not really.

Violence against women is wrong.

Her father definitely would have sacked him.

Not that James would miss the job, but his mum would obliterate him if he got sacked. She thinks that he's been learning valuable life and plumbing skills, thanks to Andy. She has no idea about the lunchtime beers. Otherwise Andy would be the one getting obliterated.

It's one in the morning.

James has to be up for work in four-and-a-half hours.

He has to sleep.

He has to stop thinking about _her._

He closes his eyes and counts backwards from one hundred. Rarely does he reach fifty before he starts nodding off.

Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight. Ninety-seven...

But she's so bloody _annoying!_

The. Most. Annoying. Person. On. Earth.

_Ever!_

He can't believe she had the audacity to keep him there—that she _tricked_ him into washing that bloody van—when he could have been at home the whole time!

Even though she'd helped a bit with the washing, in the end.

Even though he could sort of see her boobs through her tank top, and that was…

Right.

He'll just open her profile photo one more time.

One more time can't hurt.

*****

"If I hear the name 'Lily' again, I'm gonna start stapling things to your head," Sirius threatens on Tuesday.

On Thursday, Peter says, "You're beginning to sound obsessed."

"For heaven's sake!" his mother snaps on Sunday. "Stop grousing about the poor girl and ask her out on a date. I'll drive you to her house myself."

Nobody understands.

*****

"I can easily pick you up from your house from now on," Andy offers, as he pulls into a customer's driveway. A torrent of ice-cold rain batters the windscreen of the van, and a still-damp James huddles close to the hot air vent to get warm. "It'll save you having to cycle to mine every morning."

Lily didn't come outside today, but she _did_ pull unpleasant faces at him from her bedroom window. There are faded, shell-shaped stickers dotted all over the pane. She probably stuck them there herself, years ago.

James's heart is suddenly pounding at a hundred miles a minute, fear prickling his skin like a creeping chill.

"Er...no," he says, "that's fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, no, it's re—"

"It'd be no trouble."

"No, really, I'm training for a charity triathlon at the moment," he lies, much to his own bewilderment, "so I really need the practice."

"Fair enough," says Andy, and shuts off the engine.

Lily wouldn't have believed him so easily. She would have sensed the dishonesty. Somehow. She'd have questioned him to death.

God, he hates her so bloody much. 

Empress of evil. Nightmare woman. Witch.

But he'll still get to see her tomorrow.

What a _relief._

*****

The next day is overcast and dry, and James is washing the van once again when Lily comes outside to hand him a mug of coffee.

She's wearing a John Cena t-shirt.

James is a John Cena fan.

How dare Lily Evans like anything that he likes, and how dare James feel secretly delighted that she does?

"I heard you're training for a triathlon," she says, holding out the mug. 

The coffee-making is infrequent and James doesn't understand why she does it—his best guess is that her parents force her—but it's always made precisely to his liking and he truly, madly, deeply resents that fact.

"I am," he agrees, and tosses his sponge into the bucket with one hand, the other pushing his glasses up his nose. "Since when did you like John Cena?"

"Since I was nine. Take the bloody coffee, would you? It's hot." She shoves the mug toward him, sending dark brown droplets splashing gleefully over the edge. "What triathlon?"

There's no way to avoid skin-on-skin contact when he takes the proffered beverage, and James's neck and cheeks grow rapidly warmer when he touches her hand. "Sorry?"

"What's this triathlon you're doing?"

"Oh, that."

"Yes, _that."_

"It's happening at the pier in October," he supplies. "I'm doing it for Barnardo's."

The power of her searching, emerald-eyed gaze is enough to make him quake, but James takes a victory sip regardless. Princess can poke and prod as much as she likes, but she won't find a single hole in his story because he has _done his research._ He has _all_ of the information. He _literally_ signed up for the triathlon last night, and what's more, convinced his father to sign up with him. His mother is ever so proud of them both.

If Lily is impressed by this venture...well, that doesn't matter a bit to him.

Really.

"Why Barnardo's?" she asks.

"Because children are the future."

That slice of fast wit doesn't earn him the laugh he deserves. "What date in October?"

"The 20th."

"And what day of the week is—"

"It's a Saturday," James interrupts, unable to keep his contempt from seeping into his tone. "I'm doing it with my dad and he's already put a fundraising page up on his company's intranet, _and_ I'm going to ask your dad for a donation, so I don't really care if you think I'm lying because I'm not—"

"I'm sorry, what?" It's Lily's turn to interrupt, her forehead scrunching up in clear consternation. "I don't think you're lying."

"Yes you do."

"And you can see into my head now, can you?"

"No," he admits, "but you're asking me all these questions—"

"Because I was curious!" 

"Or because you wanted to prove I was lying."

"Why would anyone assume _anyone_ was lying about doing a triathlon?" Lily retorts. To her credit, she doesn't look like she's faking her confusion, but demons wouldn't be demons if they couldn't hoodwink people with ease. "I could turn up and easily prove you weren't there."

"Go right ahead," James offers, trying to ignore the very physical stirring he feels at the prospect of Lily witnessing his athleticism in person. "I dare you."

"I have better things to do than waste my Saturday watching you flail about on your bike."

"Oh, sure," he retorts, "even though you've got nothing better to do than come out here and bother me every morning?"

Lily is struck by a silence that lasts for several glorious seconds, a silence which—within this context—means an unmitigated win for James, who finds himself dazzled and defeated by her smart mouth and quick retorts every damn day of the week.

She glares at him.

He grins mock-charmingly at her.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," says Lily. Her face is starting to turn pink. "Nobody has anything better to do at this time of the morning."

"Some of us have work, actually."

"Ooh, _some of us have work, actually,"_ she repeats, with such a spot-on impression of a face he's seen himself make a thousand times in the mirror that he feels the shine from his victory immediately begin to dull. "It's not work if you don't actually _do_ anything, Flopsy."

"Still more than you're doing, Princess."

"I genuinely hate your guts, Potter," she tells him. "Just in case you didn't know."

"Works for me," James snidely replies, even as his stomach plummets like a sinking stone, "I genuinely hate you too."

*****

"I've got a girlfriend now," he tells her smugly.

There are two weeks to go before he's finished with this stupid work placement, two more weeks of mundane manual labour, two more weeks of cycling to her house in the early morning with his heart in his mouth; stomach churning, adrenaline pumping, brain scrambling to think of withering, crushing, brilliant responses in anticipation of whatever cruelty she chucks at his head today. Two more weeks of _her,_ of her sniping and her contempt, of the suffocating feeling that he's somehow come up short every time she turns her scornful green eyes upon his face.

Last night, though, he took Catherine Bisset to the cinema and they snogged through most of the film, so James feels confident in his chances at taking on his nemesis today. He is someone's boyfriend now. A winner through and through. Who did Lily snog at the cinema last night? Probably nobody.

He hopes she's snogging nobody. The idea of it makes him feel queasy.

How could he lord it over her then?

She leans against her father's van—which is now, regrettably, quite clean—folds her arms across her chest and squints at him. The sun is bright this morning, shining almost directly in her eyes.

"Do you really?" she asks, but sounds merely curious, not at all like her usual self, as if all of that hostility was siphoned out of her soul in the night.

Prepared for bite and snap, James feels his mind stumble and partly mimics her stance, crumpling sideways against the van with his hands in his pockets. "Er, yeah?"

"For real?"

"Yeah?"

"So there's a girl somewhere who you're taking on dates and kissing and she's like, going out with you?" She cocks her head to one side in question. Her hair is a tumble of autumnal curls this morning—she usually doesn't wear it like that. "Officially?"

"Yes, officially."

"Oh," she sighs, with a slump to her shoulders. Her tone is distinctly pitying now. "I'm sorry."

"Why would you be sorry?"

"Because that must be so horrible for _her."_

"That—piss off!" he yelps, jerking upright again, and she smiles at him—a sly, familiar, self-satisfied tilt of lips that whips his blood into a riot in the time it takes to heave out an angry breath. His hands have left his pockets and hover at his sides, purposeless, and he's never wanted to hurt a girl in his life but what he wouldn't _give_ to grab her shoulders and…and shake her, or…but that bloody _mouth_ of hers is just so...so _stupid._ "Just because you can't find a date, you have to shit all over mine?"

"I'm not shitting on anything," she counters, "I'm just trying to imagine what kind of dirt you dug up on this girl to blackmail her like that—or was it something else?" She lifts a finger and looks to the skies like a philosopher lost in thought. "Did she lose a bet or something?"

His eyes narrow. "You're a nasty piece of work, Evans."

"You begged and she felt sorry for you, maybe?"

"Nasty, jealous—"

"Had you loaned her money and she couldn't pay it back?" Lily lets out a small gasp. "Did you _pay_ her to date you?"

"When would I _ever_ need to pay to make a girl date—"

"I just find this so confusing—"

"Well you would be confused, wouldn't you?" he snaps, and takes a step towards her. "Because you're such a bloody nightmare that no one in their right mind would want to spend five minutes in a room with you, let alone take you out on a date!"

What follows is a short silence, and Lily's eyebrows lift slightly, but her smug smile does not falter and it makes James feel utterly silly for exploding as he has, for reacting when she is so calm. She's too adept at making him feel this way, it's like her finishing move—her extra special ability—but he has not yet discovered an equivalent superpower which might allow him to do battle with the beast.

She simply continues to thwart him at every turn.

"Did that little outburst make you feel better?" she asks him, straightening up. "Or do you need to be put down for a nap?"

"As if I could feel better with you standing here," he mutters, red-faced.

"A nap it is, then. Or maybe I could give your mummy a call?"

"Real funny, Evans. Do you get off on being condescending or something?"

"What gets me off is none of your business."

"As if I'd ever _want_ that to be my business—"

"Then why even ask—"

"I would literally rather _die—"_

"Oh, go right ahead, honestly—"

Her front door slams shut and James darts backwards several paces, lifting a hand to wave at her father, who comes striding towards the van with his usual greasy breakfast bap tucked in the crook of his arm, wrapped-up tightly in silver foil.

"Alright, Andy?" James calls in greeting. He tries to look as if he hasn't been itching to murder his boss's daughter.

"Alright Jay?" says Andy, ever the affable, grinning, ruddy-faced handyman of a thousand white vans across the country. He jerks his head at Lily. "Is she bothering you again?"

"She—"

"No," Lily loudly sighs, "he needed to confide about a penis problem."

"What penis problem?"

"He's not sure if it's normal to have one that's wider than it is long."

Andy guffaws at the top of his lungs as he disappears round the driver's side of the van, and Lily smiles at James again.

"Low-hanging fruit, Flopsy," she murmurs, and this time her smile is cold, tight, fully entrenched in bitterness. "Have fun dealing with his chode jokes all bloody day long."

He'll get her back for that tomorrow, James vows to himself, watching her retreat to the front door.

But in the two weeks which follow, Lily Evans doesn't speak to him again, doesn't venture a single step outside her door, does not even deign to appear at the window to pull faces at him as her father's van backs out of the driveway, and James—confused, frustrated, withdrawn from combat before his time had come—feels just about ready to wring her slender neck.

He remembers her—will _always_ remember her—as a nemesis, an enemy, harbinger of cruel and undeserved punishment.

He forgets he ever thought that she was pretty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To answer the question that I 100% anticipate getting: yes, there is an explanation for Lily's behaviour!!! Which you will learn!! So DON'T WORRY!!!


	4. a day in dismay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, guys, I'm just going to go right ahead and say this fic exists in an alternate universe where Covid-19 isn't a thing because that REALLY screws with Bonnie and Isabella's wedding plans otherwise.

**January 2020**

Here she is, in his kitchen.

Lily Evans, of all people.

It's inconceivable that she would be here, unfair that all of his long-forgotten memories of that one, frustrating summer would return so quickly and keenly, yet here she is and here they are, but the thing that really gets James—and maybe he's deflecting a bit from the real issue here—is that he's still holding the orange juice.

In fact, he's not just holding it, but clutching the carton so hard it might burst, his unpinned citrus grenade. Somehow he feels impeded by this orange juice, stupid orange juice, stupid man caught unawares with orange juice in his kitchen. James will wish for the rest of his life that he wasn't holding orange juice but he'll never be able to fully explain why that is, except that it's such a _commonplace_ thing to be doing. He should be brandishing a longsword or a trophy, juggling flaming torches, something impressive at least.

He needs to get rid of the orange juice, now, before this woman guts him clean.

"You remember me, don't you?" says Lily.

Her voice isn't brimming over with hatred. She doesn't look as if she's preparing to unhinge her jaw and sacrifice his vulnerable mortal flesh to her bloodlust, but that _is_ how James remembers her, and she must have missed his mumbled surprise. She must have mistaken his blank, stunned face for a lack of recognition on his part. She even looks as if she might smile.

And she's—she's very...

The younger, pubescent, ever-horny version of himself could not have hated a girl who looked like this.

But James definitely hates this girl.

He _remembers_ hating this girl.

He also remembers finding pictures of her online and masturbating his frustrations into a tissue almost daily, but that's not really relevant here and it's unkind of her to remind him and—and no, he _hates_ her.

But she's... _god,_ she's so utterly _beyond_ gorgeous that it doesn't bear thinking of. Has she always looked like this? Like a goddess in paint-splotched jeans, ascending directly from the depths of the fantasy world in his brain? Did she always have that face? That hair? Those _legs?_ James's mind is cycling rapidly through a whole production of feelings like he's watching them through an old-fashioned viewmaster, but not one of those feelings is indifference.

"Um," she says, eyes darting left and right. He's been staring at her wordlessly. "You once worked for my dad for a summer in Bournemouth? Must have been seven or eight years ago?"

James clears his throat so he may later pin his silence on an obstruction of the larynx.

"I'm sure it's you," she continues. "I lived on Sunningdale Crescent?"

"Red-brick house?" he offers weakly.

"Yeah, that's the one. Half the garden wall had been knocked down."

"Andrew Evans plumbing, right?"

"Yeah, that's—"

"I remember that he had an absolute hellbeast for a daughter," he interrupts, words that leap from his mouth with a quickness that surprises him. "That wouldn't have happened to be you, would it?"

That slight, bare hint of the promise of a smile slides right off her pretty face.

And god, James wants to staple things to his own face for it, even as he pats himself on the back and congratulates himself for being assertive.

Of all the responses he could have given, of all the times for James to remember how to string a complete sentence together, it seems that he has chosen _this_ moment, that the spinning wheel of brightly coloured emotions that has been whizzing around in his brain has come to a halt with the needle resting on ANGER, even as the little voice in his head cries _NO! NO! NO!_ but also, _where did you GO for those two weeks?_

"I thought you might say something like that," she admits, with a resigned little sigh.

"Thought so, did you?"

"I wasn't very nice to you, was I?"

He has no clever response for her, so he settles for narrowed eyes and a downturned mouth. "You weren't."

"I mean, it's fine, can't say I don't deserve it." She offers up a soft, apologetic smile, and a muscle in his throat gives an involuntary twitch. "But listen, I'm really glad that I've had a chance to bump into you again because I was such a dickhead to you back then, and I really want you to know how sorry I am, there was this _stupid_ thing with my father and I acted like—"

"I'm sorry," says James, holding one hand up, "but what exactly are you doing?"

"Um." She blinks at him. "Apologising?"

"Who asked for an apology?"

"Well, nobody," she admits, "but I was really awful to you when we were kids and I've always felt like—"

"I don't want an apology from you," he interrupts.

"You—but I just—" She lets out a nervous, fluttery little laugh, like she's decided to assume that he's joking. Heat is sweeping into her freckle-dusted cheeks. "I really think you're owed an apology, so…"

"I was owed one eight years ago," says James. He sounds very calm and very cold, so she must think he's very calm, but his heart has started pounding away like the clappers, pumping blood around his body with a lightning-storm surge. "I don't give a shit about one now."

 _Take the apology,_ an angry voice inside his head demands. _But I don't WANT the apology,_ the very same voice replies, because James is the one in the right. He was _always_ the one in the right; the injured party, the victim, and she the evil villain. James cannot be counted upon to remember every detail of that summer with military precision, but what he _does_ know is that they'd had an agreement between them, him and her, an unspoken agreement to see their fight through to the end, but then she vanished. Fucked off. Left. She never gave him the chance to be in the right, so she can't just pop back up now and _apologise,_ it doesn't—he won't—and _where the hell did she go for two weeks?_

They weren't finished, but she vanished and James hadn't wanted her to go because he—because it wasn't bloody fair that she got to win by default.

He's still holding the poxy orange juice.

"So you—" Her mouth forms a small _O_ shape. She seems genuinely stunned by his response. "You don't want to forgive me?" 

_Yes I do,_ says his stupid inner monologue. _No I don't._ "I don't forgive people who don't deserve it."

"But I really _am_ sorry, it's not like I'm lying or—"

"It doesn't matter, you made my life hell for a whole summer just because I didn't want to work for a bloody plumber—"

"That's not why—"

"So no, you don't get to waltz in here and fix the boiler and just apologise like it was nothing."

"I'm apologising because it _wasn't_ nothing!" she cries. The colour in her cheeks has swept down to her neck; she's gone almost as red as her braids, and her vivid green eyes are even more lustrous in comparison. "And look, I'd understand why you—if this was something I'd done recently, but it's not like I was acting like this last week. I was a child, I was—"

"You were old enough to know better!"

"I was _sixteen!"_

"So what? So was I!" he reminds her, though it occurs to him that he could sometimes be a shit to some of the lads at school when he was sixteen, but that is something to mull over when he feels less righteously outraged. "I didn't go out of my way to make your life a living hell, did I?"

"I'm not denying that I treated you very badly, but—"

"Badly?" James repeats, feeling his facial muscles twist into some awful, maniacal expression that must make him look like a would-be serial killer teetering on the knife-edge of sanity. "You can't even _see_ badly, alright? You're so far away from _badly_ that you'd have to drive a hundred miles just to see it in the distance. You _bullied_ me!"

"I know!" Lily cries, throwing her hands up. "I know, I was terrible! That's why I'm _trying_ to apologise but—"

"I don't want your apology," James concludes, flattening his tone so that she knows he means business. He can hear movement from upstairs. "It's too late for an apology."

"Well, I—"

"Years too late."

"I would have apologised earlier, I wanted to, but it's not like we ever saw each other around anywhere!"

"I don't care."

She's almost pleading now. "James—"

"Nope!" he cuts in, his pitch swinging up towards the ceiling again. "Nope, no, _you_ don't get to call me that. Only my _friends_ call me that, okay? Friends." He makes a large, sweeping circular motion in the air with the orange juice carton like he's using it to wipe a pane of glass, indicating the many non-present friends in his social circle, of which she is most certainly not a member. Then he thrusts the carton towards her, one finger extended. " _Not_ you, not now, not ever."

"Don't you _point_ your orange juice at me," she warns him in disgust.

"So the nasty side is finally coming out, is it?"

"I'm not being nasty, I'm— _Christ."_ She forces out a loud, heavy breath. "So only your friends get to call you by your actual name?"

James instantly recognises the error he has made, but his only option is to ride it out, so he slaps the orange juice carton down on the counter with gusto. Then he folds his arms across his chest. "That's right."

"So what does everyone else call you?"

"I...dunno."

"You don't know?"

"I don't know."

"How can you _not_ know?"

"Look, don't start with your mind games, alright? You did this _all_ the time when we were kids and I'm not doing it now, I'm a grown man." His folded arms unravel and he points to his own chest to remind her. "And _as_ a grown man, let me remind you that you're trespassing on _my_ property."

"Oh my god, kill me now," she murmurs, throwing her eyes to the ceiling.

"Don't roll your eyes at me. I own this house, yeah?" There is no reason for him to tell her this, except that there's an itch buried deep under his skin, and that itch badly wants her to know. Footsteps are thundering down the stairs, he's got maybe ten more seconds alone with her and ten seconds isn't enough because he's got old grievances to hash out and he wants...he wants—god, he wants to have sex with this woman so badly that he's starting to get hard at the very _idea_ of it. If his fury doesn't chase her out of the house, the erection probably will. "So if I _say_ you're trespassing on my property, that means you're trespassing on—"

Beatrice bursts into the kitchen like a vice cop, hands held aloft to fend off wayward missiles.

"What the _fuck_ is going on in here?" she levels, quite unfairly, at James.

"It's fine," says Lily. "We were just—"

"I see you've just assumed that _I'm_ the problem!" James cries, wheeling on her.

"You're the one I could hear shouting from all the way upstairs!" Beatrice has never been properly angry in James's presence before, she's normally so good-natured and chilled, but right now she looks like she could shoot lasers from her eyes and melt his face right off. "Why the fuck are you shouting at my friend?"

He tries to produce a scornful laugh but it sounds, possibly, like a birthing cow in pain. "We were shouting at each other, actually."

"Then why could I only hear you?"

"Because I'm overdramatic and loud and she's a _hellbeast."_

Beatrice's light brown eyes widen. "You fucking _what,_ mate?"

"It's honestly fine," says Lily weakly.

"No it is _not_ fine," says Beatrice, advancing on James like a predatory tiger. "What did you just call her?"

"Oh my god, stop." Lily grabs Beatrice by the arm and drags her a step or two away, which she valiantly tries to resist, but she's still so weak from the flu that she is easily overpowered. "What are you going to do, punch him in the face when he lets you live here for free? Don't act like an animal, please."

"I offered to pay rent, and—ow!" Beatrice yanks her arm out of Lily's grip. "That hurt!"

"No, it didn't."

"He insulted you!"

"He had a reason!" Lily fires back, and James almost lets out an appreciative cheer, but remembers that she's actually the enemy here, not Beatrice. "James and I knew each other for a while when we were teenagers—"

"She _bullied_ me when we were teenagers!" he puts in.

"—and I wasn't very nice to him—"

 _"That's_ the understatement of the year!"

"—which obviously I _know_ and I feel terrible about it so I've been trying to apologise, but he—"

"She's just been trying to save her own skin."

"I honestly haven't—well, see for yourself." Lily gestures towards James with both hands, looking helplessly at Beatrice, all weary and resigned and beautiful and wearing tight jeans. It's such a convincing victim act that he feels squeamish with guilt for a moment, especially when her wounded doe-eyes flit over his face and connect briefly with his own, which can't seem to focus on anything _but_ her, like the rest of the world is blurring and she's the only thing for miles around that remains in high definition. "It's fine, honestly, I'm just going to go home."

"But you can't just _leave,"_ says Bea, and immediately her voice becomes more soothing, cajoling, like a weary mum trying to calm her child's tantrum in the supermarket. "I haven't seen you in ages, I was going to suggest we go for lunch—"

"You're sick, Bea," says Lily. "You need to stay at home."

"So stay here then, this house has a million rooms, you won't even need to look at—"

James splutters his indignation. "She's not staying! It's _my_ house!"

"Well, what about the sink, then?" Beatrice counters. Her hands fly to her hips. "You'll need to be the one to call the plumber if she's leaving because I'm not sorting any of your shit out for you ever again."

"It wasn't your sink," says Lily. A black hoodie is resting on the counter, alongside a large, slouchy handbag with a long leather strap; she picks up the hoodie and shoves her arm through one of the sleeves. "It was your boiler, and it's fixed. You don't need to call anyone."

Beatrice sighs like the whole world is her burden, shoulders sagging, arms hanging loosely at her sides. "Babe..."

"It's fine, really," Lily interrupts. Her tone is as clipped as the zipper she yanks all the way up to her chin. "He's not obligated to forgive me and if he doesn't want to, that's his business."

"But you've _just_ said that you apologised!"

"Even so—"

"But—"

"Just leave out of it, would you? " says James to Beatrice. "You're my bloody friend too and I'm not _going_ to forgive her, so—"

"Yeah, you've made your bloody point!" Lily snaps, wheeling around, catching the strap of her bag before it slides off her shoulder. The resignation is gone in a flash, with anger taking its place. Her eyes narrow on his face and James is taken by a shudder that starts in his neck and ends at his tailbone, like somebody jammed a needle right into his spine. "You hate me, I _get_ it, and I'm _going."_

Ignoring Bea's continued pleas for her to stay, Lily swoops down to pack up her little toolbox, straightens up and fixes James with a frosted-over stare that makes him want to wither into dust, or beg for _her_ forgiveness, even though he hasn't done anything wrong.

Or maybe he's done something terribly wrong.

Just...really, terribly, catastrophically _wrong,_ because he should be bathing in triumph right now, and instead he just feels like shit.

"Enjoy having a dry kitchen floor," she says coldly.

"Enjoy...being the worst," he lamely retorts.

Lily sweeps from the room with a final, contemptible scoff, and Beatrice follows hot on her heels.

*****

Part of James really, really fancies having a wank once Evans leaves and Bea has finished yelling at him.

It's not for any creepy reason. He's not a pervert who gets off on arguing with beautiful women. He's just a little concerned for his own peace of mind because he hasn't had sex in fifteen months, and the memory of her denim-hugged hips and scornful green eyes might haunt him for weeks if he doesn't do something to put it out of his head.

If he even _can_ put it out of his head.

A bigger part of James is rightfully ashamed of that compulsion, so he changes into his trackies and goes for a run instead.

When he returns to the house—with his restless, regrettably horny energy spent by the exercise, but still dogged by the unsettling feeling that he's taken a serious misstep somewhere—he finds that Beatrice has exacted her revenge by ordering two extra large pizzas from Pizza Bella and having both smothered in mixed peppers, which James can't eat because he's allergic. She sits on the sofa and munches in a conspicuously cold silence when Remus returns from his nap and turns on _Planet Earth II,_ barely sparing James a glance and shaking her head in disgust whenever she does.

She is joined, in baffling solidarity, by James's cat, which proves a mystery. Algernon never usually has time for the other humans in the house, but when he streaks into the living room and jumps into James's lap like a vengeful ginger cloud, he scratches, yowls and hisses at his master before retreating to Bea's side to stand sentinel.

"He gets it," is her only comment.

"How can he _get it?"_ cries James in dismay. "He was sleeping upstairs the whole time!"

Beatrice laughs under her breath and Remus turns the volume on the television up, cutting James to his core.

"You've cut me to my core," he scolds.

Remus turns the volume up another couple of notches and David Attenborough's gentle musings on the nesting albatrosses of the Caribbean fill the furthest corners of the room.

And that's that. The truth at last. James is a shamed social pariah with several stinging, angry red scratches on his wrist, but no delicious, pepperless pizza to compensate, and Remus loves the _albatross_ more than he loves him.

And yes, Remus might just be siding with Beatrice because they're together, and yes, James would do the same thing in this situation if he had a beautiful girlfriend to warm his bed at night, but he feels the sting of insult anyway.

"It's just an albatross," he murmurs, though nobody is paying any attention to him, so he might as well be talking to the wall.

"Just what?" says Sirius.

"Nothing," James replies, peeved that someone other than the wall overheard him.

"You're a mess. Stop sulking and have some vodka."

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's too early."

"Sun's going down already."

"Well, I'm not in the mood."

"But I don't want to drink by myself."

"Drink by yourself, choke by yourself. See if I care."

"Could both of you please shut the fuck up?" Beatrice hisses from the sofa, so Sirius drapes himself over the side of his armchair like an off-duty ventriloquist's dummy to move closer to James. His lips are stretched in a sly and spiteful smile, revealing a row of gleaming white teeth. Nothing amuses Sirius more than conflict.

"Just give in, you know you want to," he prods, and does nothing to alter the volume of his voice despite Bea's warning. "We can play FIFA and order our own pizza. You'll be happy as a pig in shit within an hour."

It's barely teatime and that offer sounds like a disaster waiting to strike, but that annoying, tinny voice in the back of James's head is still insisting that he's the one in the wrong here, his cat has betrayed him like Brutus turning on Caesar, and there's nothing else to do but sit and soak up the telepathic waves of hatred that Beatrice no doubt believes she's sending his way.

"Fine," James agrees, "but I get to choose the pizza."

Sirius springs up from his armchair with a whoop.

*****

Hours pass.

A brief and heated FIFA tournament is held in the den upstairs.

A pepperoni pizza is consumed.

The sun goes down, they neck a few beers, a bottle of Balkan 176 is removed from the freezer, and at some point in the night that bottle finds itself empty, while James finds himself lying on his bed fully clothed, and with a bloodied tissue stuffed up each of his nostrils.

Sirius is on the floor somewhere, though James only knows this because he can still hear him talking.

"I don't _hate_ change," he's saying. "That's just a myth."

James frowns at the ceiling. He's been thinking about the green paint splotches on those worn, clinging jeans, wondering how they got there and what Evans had been doing at the time, so he hasn't got a clue what Sirius is talking about.

"What?" he murmurs. "You mean like—change like coins? From a cash register?"

"No, you twat."

"Five pence pieces?"

"I'm talking about change in _life._ "

"But you _do_ hate that kind of change."

"I don't," says Sirius sulkily. He is lying, because wanting things to stay exactly the same forever is an integral part of his being, which is why he refuses to use brands that have ever changed names in the past. James has to go without the quilted comfort of Cushelle toilet paper because of that bastard. "I just want all of the specific things I want and I remember and _I_ like _never_ to change. Everything else can change, who gives a fuck? But what about Woolworths?"

"What?"

"Where the fuck did Woolworths go?"

"I've no idea what you're talking about," James admits to the ceiling.

"Thick head's filled with women, is why."

James gasps his deep offense and sits up, his tissue paper dangling from his nose. Sirius is lying on the floor beneath the window with his feet propped up against the wall. At least, James thinks he is, because he's lost his glasses somewhere and he can't make out anything clearly that's not less than six inches in front of his face. "It's not _filled_ with women!"

"Filled."

"Half-filled!"

"Get _over_ it. She's gone. Woolworths is gone."

"So?"

"So find something else to do," says Sirius. "No more women."

James glares at the shadow-shrouded lump on the floor that currently comprises his friend. It's all well and good for Sirius, who would rather have his scrotum waxed and pounded with a meat mallet than ever be one half of a couple. Sirius doesn't have to deal with the trials and tribulations of romance, doesn't have to date, never wastes an evening repeatedly checking his phone to see if his text has been read and returned, doesn't know how it feels to have his heart crushed like a beetle underfoot, but _James_ knows, because James wants a wife and kids one day, and a wife and kids means dating. James is a grizzled veteran of love. Young as he is, he has been through the wars and lost. Repeatedly. To the exact same woman every time, which is what makes it all so embarrassing.

"No more women," he tentatively repeats, testing the way it sounds.

"Nothing but freedom here," Sirius seconds.

"No more women," says James again. _"Done_ with women. First Cath and now _Lily,"_ he spits, firing the name from his lips with as much spite as he can muster, and it's sort of funny that he can say it, Lily, like she's someone who takes up space within the sphere of his existence, like there's a familiarity between them. Something or anything. Lily. Like he _knows_ her. It's somehow very naughty to say it, like calling a teacher by their first name, but Sirius isn't going to snitch on him. He can say whatever he likes, safe in his own home where she can't get him. "They fix your boilers and you think they're not gonna break your heart but then they—'' He stifles a burp. Acid is bubbling in his stomach, sending pain shooting to the centre of his chest. "They go and break it anyway."

Sirius lets out a loud, snorting laugh. "What?"

"What?"

"But you didn't fuck the other one."

James yanks the tissue paper out of his nose. "What?"

"You didn't... _pursue_ that Lily bint."

"Right," James agrees, frowning. "Right. I didn't. But still—"

"No but still, I don't get your point."

"Because you're drunk."

"Not as drunk as you."

"There isn't—shut up," he huffily admonishes, and Sirius starts to cackle like one of the witches in Macbeth, which is fitting, because Lily Evans is probably holed up in a gingerbread cottage somewhere, sacrificing toddlers and brewing up curses in a cauldron. James hates her and she's stupid and she wasn't _really_ sorry, not very deep down, not in her _heart of hearts._

Anyway, Lily Evans is a witch who consumes the flesh of children to maintain her youth and beauty. She has _powers_ that make him want her. He'd never _choose_ it. James doesn't even _care_ what she thinks, and if his head was clamped between her thighs he wouldn't have to listen _anyway_.

He should have had that wank.

"It's s'posed to mean you're horny," he remarks aloud, examining the blood-soaked tissue that's clenched between his fingers.

Sirius gives up his deranged cackling so abruptly that he was clearly forcing himself to laugh to begin with. "What does?"

"Getting a nose bleed."

"Since when?"

"In manga."

"I don't fucking read _manga,"_ Sirius scornfully responds, as if he doesn't have a massive Shinigami Ryuk tattoo on his back. More lies. "So much for no more women."

"So I'm supposed to stop having a normal—" A second, more successful burp leapfrogs out of his neck. "A normal physical reaction?"

"Reaction to what?"

"To _her."_

"If I have to hear one more word about fucking _Catherine—"_

"I wasn't talking about Cath, I was—wait, shut up. _Shut up."_ James's phone has started vibrating, so he fishes it out of his pocket. "I'm getting a call. Private number," he adds, frowning, but he swipes right and presses it to his ear anyway. "Hello?"

"Explain to me why you think it's acceptable to ignore your friend's _repeated_ requests for the name of your plus one at her wedding!" comes a familiar, female, very angry voice.

James falls back onto his mattress and lets out an anguished groan.

*****

His suspicion that Lily Evans is, in fact, a witch, is proved correct beyond all refute when it becomes apparent that she has cursed him.

He wakes up with a hangover.

James never gets hangovers. _Never,_ and he considers it a major point of pride. While Sirius sweats and groans and weakly throws projectiles from his bed, and while Remus heaves his guts into the toilet, gripping the rim of the bowl with white-knuckled desperation, it's usually James who bounces into the kitchen for his morning coffee and makes breakfast for the household just because he can, his energy levels bolstered by the specific sense of smug self-satisfaction known only by those who _don't get hangovers._

Until Sunday morning, when James wakes up with the hangover to end all others, as if some vengeful god has discovered his unnatural secret and sent one hangover for each and every time he ever drank, or more likely, an evil, beautiful witch has laid a powerful curse upon his person and framed the god for added spice.

"It's probably the flu," says Beatrice, after she finds him in the foetal position on the living room sofa.

"It's not the _flu,"_ he groans. "I had the vaccine."

"Vaccines don't always work."

"Mine work."

"What if someone _with_ the flu licked a bunch of your things because you spoke to a very close friend of hers like she was dirt?" Bea suggests, perching on the arm of the sofa. It is deeply unfair that she is starting to feel better. "Would your vaccine still work then?"

He whimpers into his sleeve. "You _didn't."_

"Of course I didn't, I'm not a sociopath," she admits, "but I should have."

"This is _her_ fault, you know," says James, seizing upon this lingering theory that Evans has superhuman powers. "I didn't do anything different, she's the outside—she's the variable—no, the...what's it called?"

"I have no fucking clue what you're on about, mate."

"Doesn't matter, _she_ did this to me."

"How did _Lily_ do this to you?"

"She's a wi—she's a succubus."

"What the fuck's a succubus?"

"Google it, I don't have the energy."

Beatrice responds with silence, tapping away at her phone, so James twists onto his front and presses his mouth and nose into one of the purple cushions, grateful for the interlude of peace.

The satin feels nice and cool against his flushed face.

"Succubus," Bea announces to the otherwise empty room. "A female demon believed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping men." She snorts, loudly and with a derision that feels pointed. "You should be so lucky."

"I don't _want_ to have sex with her!" he barks into the cushion, knowing that this is a lie, that even in his weakened, dehydrated state, even as hatred boils continually in his veins, were he presented with a chance to have no-consequences sex with Lily Evans he would _happily_ nestle his head between her legs while she writhed about and made all kinds of gratifying noises, then bang her until he no longer had any feeling in his extremities. "I want her to stop ruining my life."

"She didn't ruin your life, she fixed our boiler and only charged us for the cost of parts," Bea reminds him, her tone scolding, "and that was _after_ you lost your shit and yelled abuse at her."

"I did not," says James haughtily, "yell _abuse."_

"Well, you didn't yell compliments."

"She doesn't deserve compliments."

"And you reckon that how?"

"Because I know her."

"You really fucking don't, mate."

"I really do," he retorts. "Better than you do, apparently."

"So when's her birthday?"

"Her—" James stalls for a moment, wondering if by some miracle he was ever made party to that information. He deduces that he has not been. "Demons don't have birthdays."

"Whatever," says Beatrice, sounding bored. "I rang her up last night and explained that you're actually a really nice person, but you had some sort of mental break yesterday and weren't acting like yourself, so whenever you want to apologise for your behaviour—"

"I've got nothing to apologise for!"

 _"Whenever_ you're ready to apologise—"

"She _bullied_ me."

"Suit yourself, then," Beatrice and whips the satin cushion out from under his face.

James's nose bounces off the sofa and he yowls in dismay before quickly flipping over to scald her with a brilliantly-phrased reprimand, but Beatrice has already risen from the sofa arm and is sweeping to the living room door.

"You live in this house for _free,_ you know!" he loudly reminds the back of her head.

"Bye, Felicia."

"Remind me to search your room for—for voodoo dolls later!"

"Go take a shower or something, would you?" she calls over her shoulder. "You smell like absolute shit."

*****

There was a phone call, James vaguely recalls, that took place in the middle of the night, after he and Sirius finished the vodka but before they started on the Lagavulin—which they only bought because of Ron Swanson in the first place, and it's properly disgusting—but James doesn't remember the particulars of the call until the evening, when a shower, a long nap, and a violent vomiting spell in the bathroom have put paid to his hangover for good.

The weather is utterly miserable outside, freezing cold and pissing it down with rain. Three people have had showers and the heating has been roaring away all day, but the kitchen floor is dry as a bone, which is great—just fucking _great,_ isn't it?

If it wasn't, they would have to call _her_ back and James would have to see her again and who wants that?

Certainly not _him._

He is giving serious consideration to the prospect of diving into the cabinet under the sink and breaking the pipe anew when the texts from Bonnie Grogan pop up on his phone.

 _Thanks for confirming your plus one, by the way._ _  
__Ten years later but whatever._ _  
__Isabella's finally cured of her crippling pre-wedding jitters weeks after she could have been, thanks._ _  
__Because it wasn't bad enough that her homophobic mother won't come to the wedding and the woman I love has been crying herself to sleep at night over it, her oldest fucking friend just had to go and be an uncooperative dick too._  
 _But hey, all sorted now!_ _  
__Looking forward to you getting us the BIGGEST MOST EXPENSIVE gift on the registry TA!_

It's aggressive and incendiary and _deserved,_ and makes him wonder if Bonnie has been day-drinking, but the worst part of it all is that James does _not_ have a plus one for that wedding.

Nor did he have one last night, when he was drunk and antsy and sick of being chided, but lied and pretended he did.

Catherine Bisset has a plus one—the bloke she _left_ him for, her bloody _fiancé_ —which is why James initially begged Bonnie and Isabella to give him one when he had no name to give them in the first place. Nothing like going to a wedding stag and rubbing shoulders with a bloke your girlfriend cheated on you with. Amnesty International ought to have an official stance on the matter. James should contact them about it.

There are more pressing matters to attend to in the meantime.

"I've got a question for you," he tells Sirius a little bit later, when Beatrice has thawed out enough to agree to spend the evening with them both, Remus having retired to bed early because it always takes him a little bit longer to recover from minor illnesses. 

She's in the kitchen making herself a hot drink, and James spots an opportunity to lay the blame for his stupid behaviour at somebody else's door.

Sirius remains focused on the telly. "This is a good episode."

"So?"

With a long-suffering sigh, Sirius pauses _Community_ and looks at James, flicking his long black hair out of his face. "What?"

"Are you out to ruin my life because you hate me," James begins, "or because my misfortune is your preferred brand of comedy?"

There is a short silence while Sirius properly digests this question, his expression impassive and his eyes blank, and James waits for the guilt to set in. He can hear Beatrice humming an Ariana Grande song in the kitchen.

"It's not my fault that you made up that shit on the phone last night," he finally concludes.

Somehow, despite the fact that his best friend never shows remorse for any reason, James is shocked, both by his complete lack of contrition and his immediate knowledge of the subject matter at hand.

"How did you—how did you know I was talking about that?" he presses, starting loud and hastily lowering his voice so that Beatrice doesn't hear them from the kitchen. Lord, that's the last thing he wants. She'd laugh and laugh and laugh before she kicked him squarely in the balls.

"What else was it going to be?"

"You couldn't have stopped me last night, no? Too busy crying over the death of Woolworths to pull your best mate out of the gutter?"

"I wasn't crying, and I had no idea that you were going to say any of that."

"You could have stopped me once I'd started."

Sirius shrugs. "Damage had already been done at that point."

"There would have been _no_ damage done if you hadn't _forced_ me to drink—"

"I didn't force anything down your throat," he counters. "I prodded you a bit, yeah, but it was ultimately your decision."

"You do realise that I'm now going to have to tell Bonnie that I don't have a guest to her wedding?" James whispers urgently, glaring daggers at the centre of his friend's pale forehead. "Have you seen the texts she sent me earlier?"

"How _could_ I have seen the texts?"

"She already wants to wring my neck for putting it off for so long because apparently I was giving Izzy anxiety, so now she'll _actually_ kill me," he continues, growing more and more irritated with each passing word, because Sirius is supposed to have his back at all times, yet here he is, holding James accountable for his actions. "You might as well start planning my funeral. You might as well pick out my _coffin_ and be done with it."

"Cool. Do you prefer walnut or mahogany?"

"Sirius!"

"What?" says Sirius, and levels James with a flat, unapologetic stare. His apathy has been replaced by a familiar, sullen kind of hardness in his light grey eyes. "If I were you, I'd sort this out as soon as I fucking could and count myself lucky that Bonnie and Isabella don't know her, otherwise you'd have her _and_ Booth on your arse and I really would have to pick out your fucking coffin."

"But—"

"But nothing, this is easily fixed."

"How?"

"Text Bonnie and tell her you were dumped."

James gapes so widely that he hears an audible click in his jaw. "And _humiliate_ myself?"

"I don't think the bloke pretending that the bint who fixed our boiler is going to a wedding as his date can say shit about humiliating himself. You've got that _well_ covered, my friend, so if you want to keep—shut up," he adds, because Beatrice has re-entered the room with a steaming mug in her hands. "I'll talk to you about it later."

"Talk about what later?" says Bea.

"James had a massive wank over your mate last night,"

Bea's eyebrows whizz north for the winter. "Did he, now?"

"Just a little one," James mumbles, and sinks low into his armchair.

He stays like that for the rest of the evening, sunken and ashamed and mentally compiling a list of texts he could send to Isabella and Bonnie to get himself out of his predicament and keep his dignity intact, which seems impossible to achieve without lying outright, and James is a terrible liar. If guilt doesn't compel him to be honest, his own belief that the person he's lying to can _tell_ he's lying is usually all it takes for the truth to come tumbling out. The only way for him to bring a believable lie to Bonnie's table is to get as drunk as he got last night, but then he'd probably be in danger of embellishing the lie he already told.

That's all he needs, to drink more vodka and wind up asking Bonnie to tell Catherine that he and Lily Evans are engaged.

It's a riotous mess of a situation and Bonnie is going to kill him, but not before Isabella disavows their friendship and spreads tales of his treachery to all of their mutual friends at the wedding.

At some point, he starts to drift off in the armchair, exhausted by his own anxiety.

He must stay out for a while, because his last memory is the pottery episode of _Community_ before he's roused from his slumber by the doorbell and sees that Bea and Sirius have already reached the season 1 finale.

"Did I snore?" he asks Beatrice, since Sirius has gone to answer the front door.

"Do you think we would have let you keep on sleeping if you had been?"

"You could have recorded it and posted it online to punish me?"

"I've done enough," Bea murmurs. She sounds exhausted. "You'll find some way to punish yourself eventually, and I'd rather just watch the telly."

It is at that moment, almost as if Beatrice willed it, that Sirius's deafening dog's bark of a laugh rings out in the hall and makes them both jump.

"What the—" Beatrice begins, but Sirius returns to the living room with a maniacal grin on his face, rubbing his hands together with glee and cartoonish theatricality, evoking thoughts of hokey Bond villains revealing their evil schemes, and who should enter the room behind him but Lily Evans, looking temptingly, unfairly, _tragically_ like a Bond girl in a slinky black dress and high heels, her long hair soaking wet and clinging to her neck and shoulders, droplets glistening on her pale, damp skin. A thick black coat and a bulky handbag are cradled in her arms like a swaddled infant.

"What?" says James blankly, just as Beatrice cries, "Babe!" and unfurls from her catlike position on the couch, but Evans ignores her, heads straight for James's armchair and full-on _slams_ her bag and coat to the floor.

"You told your _mother_ that I was your girlfriend?!" she shrieks, words packed tight with a rage so visibly consuming that her entire body is shaking.

Oh no, James thinks.

_Oh no._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the answer to your question is yes, you WILL get to read the drunken phone call next chapter


End file.
